Constable by the Sea (5 page)

That night, high tide was at 2.33 a.m., and as we watched from an alley overlooking the harbour, we could see the lights of the boats as their crews were preparing to sail to the herring grounds. And then we saw him.

A tall, lithe young man left the shadows of the harbourside and made his noisy way into town. A Dutchman, in clogs. Clip-clopping into town.

‘There’s the horse, sergeant!’ I hissed at him.

‘Where, Rhea?’

‘The clogs!’ I snapped. ‘They sound like a horse walking at night, when the streets are empty. This is our breaker, a Dutch seaman!’

‘Right, we need to catch him with the evidence. Wait here until he comes back with his loot.’

That was true. We had no evidence yet, certainly not enough to convict him, and so we simply waited and then, some forty minutes later, we heard the clip-clop of his return journey.

‘Nice work, Rhea,’ beamed Sergeant Blaketon. ‘You’ll get high praise for this one. Now, when he’s past us on the way to his ship, we go and get him. Get him
before
he gets back to his boat – I’m not sure what the law is about arresting foreign nationals on board their own ships. But the arrest is yours, so do it on British soil.’

But as the tall, young Dutchman passed us with a carrier bag full of his ill-gotten gains, he heard our movements. He started to run. Even in those clumsy clogs, he covered the ground at a remarkable speed, and he sounded like a horse at full gallop. I was sure we’d get more complaints about galloping horses, but right now Blaketon and I were hard on his heels.

The Dutchman beat us to his ship. He slithered down a harbourside ladder and reached his boat as we reached the harbour’s edge. Then, before our very eyes, he threw the offending bag into the harbour, where it sank immediately.

‘Our bloody evidence!’ snapped Sergeant Blaketon.

But the youth was doing something even worse. As Sergeant Blaketon stood and watched, he removed both his clogs and threw them one by one over the side of the boat. Each landed with a splash. One filled with water and sank, while the other sailed away into the darkness.

‘He’s thrown his clogs away!’ gasped Sergeant Blaketon.

I felt very sorry for poor Oscar Blaketon at that point, for we could not prove our case. But I do know that someone from CID had a word with the captain, and all the shops, save the final one, had their goods returned. The sixteen-year-old boy was a kleptomaniac. There was no prosecution because of
international
complications but the shop-breakings did come to an end. And so did reports of horses galloping through Strensford at night.

But Sergeant Blaketon still hasn’t obtained a real Dutch clog for his mantelpiece.

When patrolling the quiet streets of Strensford during those warm summer nights, my mind turned frequently to the initial police training course I had undergone. I recalled the essence of lectures about all manner of fascinating things, and one of the subjects was crime. It was a subject which intrigued all the students, and some went on to become clever detectives.

One aspect of crime which was discussed at length was that which is known in Latin as
mens
rea
. It is a curious phrase which refers to the state of mind of a criminal, his criminal intent in other words. It is that guilty or blameworthy state of mind during which crimes are committed. During our lectures, we were given questions which endeavoured to show us the difference between an
intent
and an
attempt
to commit crime. We were told that a person’s criminal intent was rarely punishable – a man can intend to commit burglary, rape or murder, but the mere intention to do such a thing, however serious, is not in itself a crime. On the other hand, an attempt to commit a crime is illegal.

We wondered if a person could be guilty of an attempted larceny when it was impossible to commit the full crime. One example of this is a pickpocket who dips his hand into a man’s pocket to steal a wallet, but the pocket is empty. Thus he cannot complete his intended crime. So is he guilty of attempted
larceny? If the pocket had contained a wallet, then most certainly the attempt could be completed, if not the full crime …

Many academic questions of this kind were discussed, and it is fair to say that few of us ever dreamed we would be confronted with real examples of this kind of legal puzzle. In the world of practical policing, crimes were committed, criminals were arrested and proceedings were taken. The academic side of things was left to the lawyers.

At least that’s what I thought until I came across Hedda Flynn.

Although my time in Strensford was short and somewhat fragmented, due to the shifts I worked, I did begin to recognize those whom I saw regularly. In the main, they were local people going about their business or pleasure in their small and charming town. Hedda Flynn was such a person. He caught my attention when I noticed he was beginning to loiter around the entrance to St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church and that he chose to do so at a time the local churches were experiencing a spate of offertory box thefts.

Several boxes had been broken into during the early summer months, the technique being by the simple medium of using what police described as a ‘blunt instrument’ to force open the lids. This was probably a screwdriver. The cash contents, the amount of which was invariably unknown, were stolen. Although these crimes were comparatively minor, they did present problems.

No community, whether in a town or a village, likes its church to be attacked in any way, and these crimes were considered very distasteful. It was felt they were the work of a travelling vagrant, because none of the boxes contained a large amount. The task of forcing the wooden lids and removing the contents would often result in the theft of only a few shillings, hardly a major crime.

Some good Christians argued that if the thief was so poor that the funds within the offertory boxes were vital to his existence, why not let him take them? After all, wasn’t the Church there to provide for the poor? If the fellow had asked the priest or vicar
for some money, it would probably have been given. This was an argument which did not impress the police. In their books a crime was a crime, whatever the reason for its commission.

As a form of crime prevention, we toured all the churches and chapels within our Division and suggested to their priests, vicars and ministers that they make their offertory boxes more substantial and secure. We even suggested they enclose them within the walls of their churches or make them of metal, then cement them into the floor. Some did this.

One who did not follow our advice was Monsignor Joseph O’Flaherty of St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, and it was his offertory box which I suspected was an object of great interest to Hedda Flynn.

There was a time when I considered arresting Hedda under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, for that quaint old statute created an offence of being a suspected person or reputed thief loitering with intent to commit a crime. Certainly, Hedda had
undertaken
a good deal of loitering, usually around lunch-time, but his intentions were unknown. There was no evidence that he intended to commit a crime, nor could he be described as either a suspected person or a reputed thief. The law lays down quite specifically what is meant by ‘suspected person’, and Hedda’s behaviour had not quite lifted him into that category. In fact, he was a very decent fellow.

Having noticed him once or twice, I carried out my own discreet enquiries and learned he was a married man with two small children. He worked behind the counter of a gentlemen’s clothes shop in Strensford for what was probably a pittance, and he would be about thirty-five years old. He was a small, dark man whose own clothes hung from him; they appeared to be several sizes too large, and I guessed that, as a child, his mother had always bought him clothes which were too large, so that he could grow into them. I reckoned he never had grown into them but that he still hoped he would.

His thin, sallow face with its bushy eyebrows and dark troubled eyes gave him the appearance of a haunted man, and it was clear something was troubling him. Was he a lapsed Catholic who wanted to return to the faith?

On the other hand, I wondered if his conscience was troubling him. I wondered if he was fiddling the till at work, or whether he had another woman in tow, or, of course, whether he was the offertory box thief who was plaguing the district.

I decided to speak to Monsignor O’Flaherty about Hedda and about the risks to his offertory box. I had seen the box in question – it was a simple wooden container screwed to a table at the back of the church, and it would be a simple matter to force the lid with a screwdriver and remove its meagre contents.

I knocked on the door of the presbytery and was admitted by the priest’s housekeeper, who showed me to a study littered with books and watercolours. Some stood on the floor and others filled every possible space on the wall. I waited, intrigued by the smell of the place and its wonderful array of books and paintings.

The Monsignor came in, smiling and happy. He was dressed in a clerical grey suit with a carnation in his buttonhole. He was a very rounded man with a rosy red face and thinning grey hair above very bright and twinkling blue eyes. He looked like a man who enjoyed life.

‘Ah!’ he smiled. ‘’Tis the law. You’ll be having a drink then?’?’

‘Good morning, Monsignor,’ I said. ‘I’d like a coffee please.’

‘Coffee, is it? I was thinking of something more congenial, like a dram of the morning dew? So is it coffee or whisky, or perhaps both?’

‘Just coffee, Monsignor. I’m on duty.’

‘So it’s official, then? You’re not coming to see me about your spiritual welfare or to get married or something? Haven’t I seen you at Mass?’

‘Yes, but this is police work.’

‘Then sit yourself down, son, and I’ll arrange the coffee. Sugar? Milk?’

I requested both, and the tray soon appeared with coffee for us both and a glass of his ‘wee dram’. While we drank them, he learned my name and something of my own family background. The introductions and pleasantries over, we turned to the purpose of my visit.

I began with the attacks on offertory boxes and put forward various suggestions for making them less vulnerable to thieves. He listened attentively and said he had seen reports in the
Strensford
Gazette
about the other attacks.

‘But, you see, I always make sure there is a collection plate on the table at the back of the church, close to the door. And in that plate, there is always a few coins; either the faithful put them there or I do, so if a thief does come, he’ll grab that money and he’ll leave the box alone. Now, I don’t mind him taking those loose coins, and indeed, I’ll seldom know whether he has or not, will I? It’s only copper, but it could be food for a starving man. And our offertory box has never been forced open.’

I admired the sheer logic of this and now recalled the large wooden collection plate which was always on the table near the main door. It often had a half crown or a florin in it, with an assortment of smaller coins, such as a sixpence and one or two pennies.

‘There is something else, Monsignor.’ I emptied my coffee cup and he refilled it from the percolator.

‘Go on.’

I told him about Hedda Flynn and my suspicions. He listened and then smiled in understanding.

‘Hedda is a good man,’ he said. ‘A very good man, a faithful member of my congregation and as honest as the day is long. He would never do anything wrong to anyone, let alone steal from the Church.’

‘He does linger about the back of the church.’ I had come across this very Christian attitude many times before but police officers are cynical and distrustful. ‘I feel I ought to warn you of his activities.’

‘Thanks anyway, constable, but I know Hedda. And I might add, I know his wife too. Now there’s a holy woman. Mass at half-seven every morning. Benediction twice a week. Generous to the church, generous to a fault she is. Wonderful wife for Hedda, wonderful mother for her family. A church helper, too. She does the flowers for the altar, cleans the church – she’s a saint, constable, a true saint. Hedda is a very lucky man, very lucky.’

I felt I had fulfilled my purpose. I had drawn his attention to the risks and I had even named a suspect. Perhaps I had been wrong to do the latter, for it was clear that the Monsignor thought a lot about the Flynn family, although I did wonder why, if Hedda was such a good Catholic, he hung around the back of the church at lunch-time rather than enter to kneel and pray. But it was time to go.

Before I left, Monsignor O’Flaherty showed me some of his books and explained that he collected watercolours by the local artist Scott Hodgson, hence his massive assortment of his, and other artists’, works.

Within a week, two more offertory boxes had been broken into, each in parish churches in nearby moorland villages, and even I felt that Hedda could not be responsible for those crimes. He didn’t have a car, and I knew he had been at work during the material times. But he continued to hang around the back of St Patrick’s …

Then came the day I decided to do something positive. It happened because late one Friday afternoon I chanced to be walking past the main door of the church, in full uniform, just as the small, untidy figure of Hedda was vanishing inside. He had not seen me, and so I crossed the street and climbed the wide and steep flight of steps up to the entrance.

I must admit that my heart was beating; I wondered if I was about to arrest a thief actually in the act of committing his crime and found myself tiptoeing across the threshold and into the interior of the large building with its subdued lighting and hushed atmosphere. I had to find out what he was up to.

The large, ribbed door was open, as it always was during the daytime hours, and I sneaked inside. I removed my uniform cap and found myself in the shadows of the rearmost part of the church, my soft-soled boots making no sound on the marble floor. And I could see Hedda at the table which bore the offertory box. He stood with his head bowed in the silence of the empty church. The box had not been touched, but he was gazing down upon it, both hands resting on the table.

I did not know what to do. He had committed no crime, not yet. I waited. He stood there, almost as if in prayer, and then
turned to leave. He moved quickly, almost abruptly, and suddenly found himself face to face with me, my uniform buttons catching the multi-coloured lights of the stained glass windows.

‘Oh, Holy Mother of God, you gave me a fright, so you did, standing there like that,’ he said.

‘What are you doing, Mr Flynn?’ I asked.

‘Doing, officer? Nothing. I came to say a prayer or two, that’s all. Why should that interest the police?’ There was bravado in his voice, but I could hear the tremors as he spoke.

‘Mr Flynn. We have been having a lot of cash stolen from offertory boxes in recent weeks. We’re keeping our eyes open for the thief …’

‘My God, you don’t think I’m the thief! Oh, Jesus, now that is terrible. Really terrible … No, I’m no thief, sir, never in a million years. I mean, look, the box has not been touched …’

‘Then what were you doing?’ I had to press home my
questions
now. ‘If you were praying, why weren’t you kneeling in one of the pews?’

He hung his head, and I saw tears in his eyes.

His small, drawn face had a haunted look, a desperate look which I could see clearly now that I was so close to him. It did not take a clever person to realize that he was sorely troubled in some way. I still wondered if he had intended to break into the offertory box and whether his strong faith, coupled with the atmosphere of the church surroundings, had defeated him.

‘I need to talk to someone,’ he said, looking around, but we were alone in the vast emptiness of the church. ‘I wanted to talk to Monsignor but he thinks such a lot of Teresa.’

‘Teresa?’ I asked, hoping my voice sounded gentle and encouraging.

‘My wife,’ he said, wiping his eyes roughly with his sleeve. ‘She’s a … well, they say she’s a good, holy woman, you see, but …’

‘Go on,’ I spoke softly now, cognizant of the atmosphere in which we stood and increasingly aware that he was about to unburden himself of a massive problem of some kind. And now
I was sure he was no thief.

‘Well, you’re a Catholic. I’ve seen you at Mass,’ he said. ‘So that makes it easier, you’ll understand what I’m saying. I must talk to someone, I’m getting desperate …’

I wondered about moving outside but realized the church probably provided the best surroundings for whatever he wished to say. I smiled at him and said, ‘Well, Mr Flynn, here I am, and I am very happy to listen to you.’